Smooching robots do it for real, what next?

Juniper Foo | Aug 26, 2009

(Credit: Tech Taiwan)

Does anyone draw the line at this? With robots now taking over the fashion catwalk, it's only a matter of time before they can be engineered to run our lives and, heaven help us, in bed. No doubt, Thomas and Janet, two bots who apparently have been sucking lips since December 2008, are simply mimicking the action with some very clever and complex mechanisms.

Now, I'm a huge fan of Battlestar Galactica--where Cylons prove more human than their real counterparts--yet one can't help but be reminded of the apocalyptic fallout and near destruction of the human race brought on by embittered robots. Yes, embittered.

So imbuing these cybernetic beings with artificial intelligence and, soon, emotions, is kind of spooky to contemplate. Even if harmless, do we need another boy mecha like David in A.I., programmed for a synthetic love that can never be switched off?

Taiwan Tech, the surrogate parent of Thomas and Janet, is far from done. The National Taiwan University of Science and Technology has said that it is now designing life-size robots of pandas and other animals "who can be gently hugged by children without causing danger and interact with them". Do Androids dream of electric sheep?